7 Chrome Android Features That Will Make Your Web Surfing Better

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The mobile version of Google Chrome offers a ton of features to help you maximize your web browsing experience. Here are seven not-so-obvious possibilities you might not know about.

1. Quickly close all tabs

The number of open tabs with active browsing sometimes reaches several dozen. Closing them one at a time is not the most convenient exercise. Fortunately, thanks to Chrome's non-obvious option, you can do this with all your tabs at once.

1. Click on the icon with the number of open tabs or just put your finger on the address bar and swipe down - this will expand all the tabs on the screen.
2. Go to the browser menu (icon with three dots) and select "Close all tabs".

Please note: this item appears in the menu only when all tabs are expanded on the screen.

2. Search by image

If you select an image as a search query, Google will find other copies of it in different sizes, as well as the most similar images. This search function can be useful if you see a photo on a web page that you want to download in a higher resolution. Chrome makes it very easy to do this.

1. Hold your touch on the image.
2. Select "Find this image on Google."
3. Click Other Sizes at the top of the SERP or Similar Images at the bottom, whichever you are looking for.

3. Disable content recommendations

On the screen of the new tab, Chrome displays links selected by the algorithm, which in theory should be of interest to you. But not all users need such collections. In addition, rendering recommendations wastes system resources and traffic. Therefore, if you want, you can turn them off.

1. Copy this link and paste it into your browser address bar: chrome: // flags / # enable-ntp-snippets.
2. Once on the hidden settings page, next to Show content snippets on the New Tab page, click "Default" and select "Disabled".
3. Restart Chrome.

If you did everything correctly, the recommendations should disappear from the new tab screen.

4. Scaling pages and text

If an image or other element on a web page is too small, you can gesture closer to see it. But website developers sometimes block this possibility. Fortunately, Chrome allows you to bypass the ban with a couple of simple steps.

1. Open your browser "Settings" and go to the "Accessibility" section.
2. Check the "Force zoom" checkbox.

Then you can zoom in on any web page.

In the "Accessibility" section, there is another useful option - "Text scaling". It can be useful for visually impaired people and everyone who does not want to strain their eyes with too small print. By moving the slider to the desired level, you set the font size that will be displayed on the default sites.

5. Quick search of the selected text in Google

Sometimes you need to insert a word or an entire piece of readable text into Google to find related information. To do this, you can select a part of the text, copy it, open a new tab and paste it into the search bar, or use the browser context menu. But Chrome has a different, faster way.

1. Click on "Settings" then "Personal Information".
2. Make sure the "Quick Find" option is enabled.

If the quick search mode is activated, then with each selection of text at the bottom of the screen, a special button appears for instant insertion of a fragment into Google.

6. Search on an open page

A web page can contain tens of thousands of characters. But what if you only need to find sentences with a specific word or phrase among them? For this purpose, the local search function "Find on Page" is provided in the Chrome menu. Experienced web surfers are familiar with it. But if you did not notice her, then you should know: she will find any symbols in the text for you.

7. Downloading pages for offline viewing

More recently, Chrome users can download web pages to their mobile device and view them offline. This feature was available before, but only in test mode, and it had to be enabled in the hidden settings of Chrome. Now it works for everyone by default. To load an open page, do the following:

1. Open the browser menu (icon with three dots).
2. Click on the arrow button in the top row.

The pages saved in this way go to the "Downloaded files" section, which can be opened in the browser menu.